The Subterranean Secrets of Denton, Texas
65 min
•Feb 11, 20262 months agoSummary
This episode explores the Denton, Texas FEMA headquarters, a massive underground nuclear bunker built in 1964 during the Cold War to house federal officials in case of nuclear attack. The facility features state-of-the-art defensive systems, redundant communications, and self-sufficiency capabilities, but has since been repurposed as office space. The hosts discuss speculation about interconnected tunnel networks beneath Denton and other U.S. cities.
Insights
- Cold War-era infrastructure built with remarkable foresight regarding shock-mounted utilities, Faraday cage construction, and redundant systems remains largely intact and functional decades later
- Government agencies like FEMA face ongoing public speculation and conspiracy theories about underground facilities, requiring regular public information efforts to manage expectations and misinformation
- The repurposing of classified military infrastructure for civilian government use creates ambiguity about actual capabilities versus public narratives, making verification difficult
- Strategic placement of bunkers in 'Goldilocks zones' (close enough to major infrastructure but far enough from likely strike targets) reflects sophisticated Cold War contingency planning
- Lack of public confirmation about interconnected tunnel networks doesn't preclude their existence, as government agencies have no incentive to disclose such infrastructure
Trends
Renewed public interest in Cold War-era infrastructure and continuity-of-government facilities following Netflix platform distributionGrowing listener engagement with conspiracy theories about underground government networks and secret infrastructureRepurposing of classified military/government facilities for civilian administrative use as cost-effective real estate solutionsPublic skepticism toward government agencies' official narratives about emergency preparedness and disaster response capabilitiesIncreased speculation about utility tunnels and underground infrastructure in major metropolitan areasData center expansion driving water and power resource concerns in technology-focused citiesListener-driven content generation for conspiracy and unexplained phenomena podcasts through crowdsourced tips
Topics
Nuclear Bunker Architecture and DesignCold War Emergency Preparedness InfrastructureFEMA Regional Headquarters OperationsContinuity of Government (COG) PlanningFaraday Cage Technology and EMP ProtectionNike Missile Battery SystemsUnderground Tunnel Networks and SpeculationFederal Civil Defense Administration HistoryDisaster Response CoordinationClassified Military Infrastructure RepurposingNuclear Blast Survival EngineeringGovernment Transparency and Public InformationUtility Infrastructure and Water ResourcesData Center Environmental ImpactListener-Driven Investigative Journalism
Companies
iHeartRadio
Production company and distribution platform for the podcast; recently made content available on Netflix
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
Operates the Denton, Texas facility as Region 6 headquarters for disaster response coordination
Texas Women's University
Located in Denton; confirmed to have underground utility tunnels for maintenance purposes
University of North Texas
Located in Denton; contributes to the city's university town character and economy
Netflix
Recent distribution platform for the show, bringing new audience to the podcast
People
Earl Armstrong
FEMA public information specialist who provided official explanations about the Denton bunker facility
John B. Denton
Militia captain, pioneer, and preacher after whom Denton, Texas and Denton County were named
Pure
Listener who submitted tip about underground waterway drilling and secret infrastructure in Denton
Tameo Wakayama
Japanese-Canadian photojournalist whose work documented civil rights movement and Japanese internment
Quotes
"The facility came about because in the 1950s the Eisenhower administration realized that we needed a place for federal employees to seek shelter from a nuclear attack."
Earl Armstrong, FEMA Public Information Specialist
"It could have still functioned as a legit fallout shelter all the way up to the mid 1980s... the reason that it's no longer a fallout shelter is because after hurricane katrina congress said you gotta hire more staff at fema."
Earl Armstrong
"If there is some aspect of secret government or deep state or after the fall of civilization stuff going on, if that was the case, why would anyone confirm it?"
Host (Ben)
"It seems dumb not to do that. Just objectively, it feels like something someone would have pitched and it feels like it would be a really great idea. It's a no brainer."
Host (Noel)
"No government agency has confirmed the existence of any vast interconnected tunnel network. Those things don't exist, or at least no one has been confirmed to have access to them."
Host (Matt)
Full Transcript
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now, or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. My name is Noel. They call me Ben. We're joined, as always, with our super producer, Dillard, the Tennessee pal, Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. So welcome back, everybody. This is going to be a fun one for us, a literal and metaphorical deep dive. Guys, remember a little while back, for a while now, we've been exploring rumors about secret underground cities and networks. doing a little urban spelunking down into the caves. Yes. Yes. And earlier this year on Listener Mail, we heard from somebody named Pure and told us a little something, something about a place that we're going to explore today. Y'all, I can't not think about when I hear Denton, Texas, there's this mountain goat song called the Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton. And it ends with a chorus of Hail Satan, Hail Satan, Tonight, Hail Satan. It's fabulous. Mm-hmm. Are we talking about Satan today, y'all? Is there be Satanists in these subterranean caves? We're always kind of talking about Satan. I suppose. He's always hanging in the background over our- Which shoulder? The right shoulder, I think. So we asked you, our fellow conspiracy realists, to help us identify more of these alleged subterranean hidey holes and friends and neighbors. You delivered. We've been astonished by how much response we got. And it seems that the United States, at least, is positively riddled with little-known underground secrets. So thanks to the inspiration from our pal, Pure, we are diving into another hidden underground complex. It might be new to a lot of us in the crowd. There's a little town called Denton, Texas, and it has a secret. Yeah, just north of big old Dallas. Little Denton. Little Denton. Underneath there, there's some weird stuff going on. So we'll pause for a word from our sponsors. Get our shovels and dig in. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. This is Special Agent Regal. Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here are the facts. All right, Denton, Texas. Like we said, it's north central Texas. If you pull up a map, you're going to see Denton is the main city of the eponymous Denton County. This is part of the huge Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, metroplex. And it's a little bit less than 40 miles north of that conurbation. And as we're going to see, that's kind of a Goldilocks zone. And guys, weren't we in Dallas a few years ago? Maybe it was a podcast movement. We went to a conference or something there, and I actually had a layover at DFW last week. So I didn't really get to experience the culture that is the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. But I was there. I can only imagine that that place has a ton of different areas with completely different cultures. Also, that airport, you have to be careful at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport because it is unforgiving if you go the wrong way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little labyrinthine. I'm glad I just, you know, sallied forth, you know, unperturbed. If I had known that it was scary, I might have gotten lost. No, we didn't make it out to Denton that last time we visited, but we're definitely going to stop by the next time we are in town. This is known as Lil D or Lil Austin. Lil Austin. Also, it bills itself as the Halloween capital of Texas. So I was sold. Well, at least they're not like really jumping the shark and saying of the world. I'm always a little sus whenever you see people giving themselves that kind of designation. Especially with the air quotes by it. You know, I like a humble roadside stop. Save me from the biggest frying pan in the world. I am going to pull over if I see a sign that says the fourth largest frying pan in the world. And give me the world's best cup of coffee is what I say. I would like the world's second best or the world's 15th best. The specificity is just brilliant. Well, the world's second best Austin is a really interesting concept here because one of the things we know about Denton is that there's some money in Denton, just like Austin, right? Oh, yes. Yeah, that's a great point. There's a lot of weird history to it as well, similar to Austin, Texas. Denton, the city, and then the larger county. Denton, the city, is like the county seat of the area. They're both named after a militia captain, a pioneer, and a preacher, a guy named John B. Denton. He's very much a great candidate for ridiculous history. He's locally famous for all sorts of things, including, to be honest, being an absolute monster to Native American populations. I hate to say it, but whenever I hear something like militia captain, I'm always a little, hmm, what'd this guy do? What horrific acts did this fellow get up to? Yeah. History has proven that maybe he was treated as a little bit more of a hero than we would ascribe in the modern day. But I love that we're pointing out the artsy nature here. This is also a university town. It's home to the University of North Texas, as well as Texas Women's University. And just like Austin, it's known for this hip music and art scene. I think the tourism board of Denton is not paying us for this. In fact, they may be a little irritated with us after this episode. But I think we should go. I think we will have a good time. I'm down. I'm always down for a road trip. Let's do it. I want to explore the waterways that Pure told us about. Just full disclosure, everybody, for this episode. We're not going to talk about reservoirs or whatever lines of water that were drilled beneath the city, which is what Pure was telling us about. We're going to talk about some other underground stuff, but I would like to explore some of that just to see if you think about Denton, a city like that, or Dallas-Fort Worth, right, which is just south of where we're exploring today. the amount of water cities like that need is just astonishing. Thirsty boys. Oh, yeah. And especially if, you know, technology-focused cities like Denton around the world continue to build data centers, you're going to need some more water and power. I heard it. I think I mentioned last time we were talking about data centers, this NPR piece I heard. It was on Marketplace where Kai Rizdahl was touring all of these various data centers in Silicon Valley area. And he pointed out there is a giant pipe in the wall that is like cold water intake. And the dude, when he was giving them the tour, who was faced with the question of like, isn't this kind of bad for like water resources? The spin that boy put on it. I'll tell you. Give it to me. Yeah. Yeah. Made your head spin. What was his spin? Do you remember? Just immediately pivoting to, we try to be good partners to the community. Oh, tight. Yeah. non-answery type stuff you know a little bit of conversational parkour you'll love to see it oh we're seeing a lot of that these days oh gosh yeah we are across multiple languages and for multiple things off air you guys by the way that reminds me i've got to share with you a little bit of a tale and we can figure out how we handle it um that's a weird tease look denton has a ton of tourism websites if you find yourself in the area it's more than worth the trip. Let us know if you're a local. Obviously, the best restaurants and the best kept secrets, but we are not here to advertise just for the good vibes of Denton, although those are very real vibes and they seem very cool. Instead, we're here because Pure turned us on to the fact that Denton has a secret beneath the bustle of the universities, the clubs, the restaurants, the bars, the city parks, there is another kind of Denton. It's a secret place that once upon a time was built to be a final bastion of American civilization, just in case the bombs flew and the world collapsed. In fact, there's an old Nike missile base nearby. So shout out to our previous episodes. What was we... Nike the shoe company makes missiles. It'd be cool, yeah. it's harkening back to the greco-roman mythology but um i i swear i should have looked this up earlier i swear we talked in depth about nike missile bases when we explored um that strange pyramid looking structure in the upper midwest yeah i know i know what you're talking about ben look should we just give a quick understanding of what nike missiles are as well just while we're here. Yeah, hit us with it. Lest you be picturing an exclusive drop of a missile with a swoosh. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. Nike missiles are designed to be surface-to-air missiles. They're guided missiles. When you think about America's nuclear arsenal, at least in the Cold War days, in those early Cold War days, that is what we would have all across the United States, especially as we've talked about on the show before, it kind in the central area where it's a little harder to get a missile, you know, or something to that area in the middle of the United States. And if there was a missile incoming, you could send those surface to air missiles out before, you know, let's say the silo gets struck. Yeah. Yeah. But these were developed way back in the 1950s. So they've been around for a long, long time. And for, to my knowledge, guys, most of the Nike silos and bases have been decommissioned, Not all of them because we still have, right? That's part of our arsenal. Right. But there are a ton that we are aware of now because they have been decommissioned. Yeah. Yeah. And for anybody playing along at home, the episode that we couldn't remember for a second is the Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Complex. It's in North Dakota. Check it out. It looks super weird. We talk at length about the importance of Nike missile batteries. That was published September of 2025. We're just finding more and more strange Cold War relics, aren't we? That one is not ringing a bell for me. I need to go do my homework. I may have been absent for that one. You know what? It's still there. And if we can convince accounting to let us go to North Dakota, then you promise we will film some stuff. I thought you meant the podcast episode was still there in case I wanted to revisit it. But no, the structure is also there. And podcasts are, of course, forever. So don't say anything dumb, guys. That's right. We will always be on Netflix. Oh, gosh. Now I'm picturing the Shining group photo at the very end of the shot. Spoilers, by the way. At the very end of the Shining, I'm picturing the group photo from the early 1900s. And it's just got all of our faces there. Sorry, Dylan, you've come with us this far. So thanks for being on the show. Dylan's the guy in the dog costume. No. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, Dylan. I'm just kidding. It's funny, folks, because we can see each other as we're recording. And I always pay attention to the little microphone that shows me whether Dylan is muted or unmuting. And we got a quick unmute on that one. Yeah, yeah. That was nice. I'm obviously scat, man. There you go. Mr. Crothers. Dude, that velvet painting of the buxom naked woman over his bed in that one shot is fabulous. I really want that for my house. I don't even know what we're talking about. Oh, in The Shining, Scatman Crothers, who plays Dick Halloran, there's a shot where he's like watching the news and he's in bed. And there is just this incredibly ostentatious velvet painting of a gorgeous naked woman with an afro. and it's just the most 70s thing ever of all time and I love it and I want it. I'm going to confess that even as a younger entity, I paused that recording to look at the painting. It's a beautiful piece of work. I love a velvet painting. Yeah, we should have more of those. We should have a Stuff They Don't Want You to Know velvet painting. Let's do it. I'm just keeping a list of weird stuff to pitch to accounting, guys. So North Dakota, Denton, velvet paintings. you heard it here first uh also the other scat man i didn't know this uh i'm sure i'm sure you guys know this uh he he had an entire second career of fame in japan scat man is in the yeah yeah yeah yeah i just remember that from beavis and butthead there they they they did some really in-depth commentary on the scat man yeah how could you not uh anyway he's big in japan And maybe one day we will be as well. But we are not going to be as big as the hidden secret of Denton, Texas. You walked down the street for that one, my guy. And I'm here for it. I am an enthusiast of conversational parkour. It's good. You bounced off some buildings. I love it. Thank you, I think. So let's do it. Let's journey back to the days of the Cold War. And we'll return after a word from our sponsors. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it cause so much harm at every single level of the british establishment of this is wrong listen to doubt the case of lucy letby on the iheart iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Here's where it gets crazy. All right. Our story starts with a predecessor of today's FEMA, something called the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. Classic Cold War stuff formed in 1958. Maybe a way to say it is that the OCDM is kind of like how the OSS was to the CIA. Does that make sense? A little bit of a proto version. Yeah. Yeah. It's designed for literally emergency management, right? It's descriptive. I will give it that. I kind of get what they're about. You know, emergency deployment of civil services that are needed in the event of emergency, able to be mobilized to help out. Yes. And also our nukes on the way. And what do we have to do? Right. Right. Because we have five minutes. Thank goodness we practiced. That's the idea. That's the Minutemen thing that we've talked about before. Do look that up if you don't know more about that, just the concept that there were always people and there still are always people on hand ready to deploy our nukes if nukes are on the way. Yes. Yeah. And a lot of checks and balances. We've talked in the past about Russia's alleged dead hand system. Just please be aware, folks, at this point, pretty much every nuclear power has something like that. And the U.S. was actively building these things during the Cold War. Not everybody was super into the idea. FEMA, of course, didn't start off as FEMA. It's been reorganized, shuffled, expanded. It has all kinds of DLC, we could say, at multiple points in history. Another direct predecessor is Truman's Federal Civil Defense Administration. The public did not initially like this. This was taxpayer money. And there was a newspaper quote we found from the time that said the federal civil defense administration has no authority to do anything specific or to make anyone else do it. Yikes. Shots fired. Haters. We're just here to help. Just here to help. You don't got to do things. Was the attitude like sort of like an anti big government attitude that made people skeptical of a thing like this? Yeah, some of it was that for sure. And another aspect of it was, why is this a thing? Right. What is this doing that other parts of the government don't already do? You know what I mean? Yeah, it is one of those things, though, because we know that we guys 15 years ago, count them 15 years ago. on the HowStuffWorks YouTube channel, we put out our FEMA camps episode. Oh, that's right. Seriously. 15 years. This isn't to go on too much of a rant, but with all the stuff happening right now with detention centers or other government agencies that are popping up, people are going back and watching that video. And you got to read the comments at some point if it takes some time, just about people discussing how um right the conspiratorial minded folks were back then but we're getting a lot of indication for some conspiratorial minded folks y'all have you seen all the pizza mentions in the epstein files not to derail even further but just saying we should get to that at another time that is mind-boggling i've got some stuff with that too yes we absolutely should do uh we're gonna have to do an epstein update yeah oh yeah but just to finish that thought guys the they weren't right about the specifics they were right in the general sense right that there were um the camps and camps that were being built uh or could they could be repurposed for reasons which is exactly what we're seeing it's setting up infrastructure you know under a guise you know that's it's i completely agree with that aspect of it yeah i think one day you know again we've said it to each other off air but one day i just want to be right about something good well well there is some good in there too, because that is not to say FEMA doesn't do an excellent job at times, depending on the disaster they're responding to, right? We've seen that over and over again since those 15 years have passed where FEMA steps in, saves people, helps people. We've also seen a lot of pretty intense criticism of FEMA's response, right? Depending on where you are and where you're from. And guys, we're talking about that because we're getting into FEMA. I don't know my ultimate point other than this is an organization that I think there's been a heavy amount of skepticism felt towards this organization from the jump, as you said, Ben, but that continues today. Absolutely, because it continues expanding. FEMA is first and foremost a coordinating entity, right? It brings in the military. It brings in local resources. It's supposed to unify efforts in the wake of things like forest fires and hurricanes and, you know, nuclear attacks. It's also, we have to remember too, this is just some speculation, but we have to remember how incredibly dangerous and tense things were in the United States at this point. So much so that if you are a federal level politician, you have to publicly be seen as doing something. You can't just shrug your shoulders and say, yeah, I get it. It sucks. We all might die. You have to say, yeah, I get it. It sucks. We all might die. And so we made a thing, you know, like we did something with your tax dollars. It's the nuclear war threat. It's impossible to over overemphasize just how much it changed the chessboard. The U.S. has obviously been no stranger to domestic conflicts. But now what would have once been a regionally contained proxy war could trigger a domino effect of nuclear retaliation in a very real way. Civilization could collapse at any time within a matter of hours. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of nuke apocalypse type fiction shows lately. The Fallout series, which describes exactly what you're talking about and I think is so good, whether you're into the games or not and then the uh german time travel apocalypse show dark which also has some you know hints of this kind of stuff only more on like the the nuclear power plant disaster side of things but i haven't watched i haven't watched the uh last episode of season two yet you guys but i'm very excited to watch oh my gosh it's really good we're talking about uh fallout right yep oh fallout okay okay yeah i've gotta i've gotta catch up with that one as well. The death claws look dope and they're like clearly a dude in a suit, like a puppet thing. It's really great. I love the practical effect. Yeah, they're doing a great job. So everybody is super worried about this and they're not, their paranoia is not invalid. This is a thing that can happen. Denton, Texas is also not an exception to this widespread public panic, widespread panic. Not a bad band. Anyway, Denton is exceptional because it is inland to the earlier point that you made there, Matt. It is also not too far nor too close to a major urban area. So this is a Goldilocks zone for federal disaster preparation. I mean, think about it. It's got all the, Noel, to your point about infrastructure, right? It has all the infrastructure advantages of Dallas-Fort Worth. It's got proximity to air transport. It's got the military on deck. It also, you know, by this point, Denton is already home to tons of pre-existing private fallout shelters and bunkers. And these are being built like mad because of all the paranoia surrounding nuclear Armageddon. Brought to you by Vault-Tec. yeah it's cool because a couple of those private facilities are still around today and it is friends and neighbors a shared dream of our show to go and buy a house and learn that it has a fallout shelter i mean that's just such a feature you know i would buy it for that very reason have y'all ever been in a proper fallout shelter i don't think i ever actually have yeah i've toured one yes got it um jealous but i mean you also went to space camp with that mika uh space camp look at this guy it's astronaut max powers yeah um it's making me think i'm sorry guys i just was trying to remember the government organization that was created by executive order for japanese internment during world war ii in the country and it made me think just you know continuing to talk about the skepticism and the people's wary of FEMA and organizations like that. The War Relocation Authority, I think is the name of it. And I wonder if those like emergency powers, anything that's meant that just kind of pops up during an emergency by either an executive order or a quick session in Congress, like we need another organization to run this specific thing. I wonder if there's any kind of anxiety that gets raised in those times. But I also don't know what it was like, you know, to be in the fifties or in the cold war era, knowing that internment had happened not that long ago, where it could be a lever that the government pulls at some point to like decide that some group of people needs to go away for a while. I learned something really interesting recently when I was just in Vancouver, I went to the art gallery, Vancouver art gallery. And weirdly there is an exhibit there of photo journalist, uh, Tameo Wakayama. And a big part of his work was photographing the civil rights movement. Many of the images being from right here in Atlanta, seeing like young John Lewis and all that stuff was really trippy being that far away from home. But he was a Canadian, a Japanese Canadian who was went through the exact same thing there in Canada, where Japanese Canadians were also relocated and stripped of property and put in these sort of, you know, siloed areas, these ghettos kind of. And I had no idea that that was going. I didn't know that. Yeah. Really, really interesting. I brought his book. It's a book of his work, which includes a lot of images from that time and also from the civil rights stuff called Enemy Alien. Highly recommend it. Tameo Wakayama. I'll put it on the list. Thank you there. And also to your earlier point, once the infrastructure exists, it can be used for anything similar to its original intended purpose. So at the time in the 50s, you would be surprised, folks, at how close the U.S. government came to saying, well, why don't we just lock up anybody that we think is a communist? Totally. It's just put them in the same dorms. Feeling that hard right now, y'all. I don't know, guys. That might be overboard. Why don't we just spy on everybody and try and figure it out? And then someone said, that's exactly what a spy would say. and they just stared at each other in the boardroom and someone was like hey guys i'm gonna get a coffee it's getting real tense does anybody anybody want a coffee i'll get my own coffee i'll get my own coffee or maybe some pizza anybody want some pizza right what is it grape soda sorry back to texas right yeah back to texas with all this stuff i love this conversation so If you pull up the map of Dallas-Fort Worth and scroll up to Denton, you're going to zoom in, and around where Loop 288 meets US 380, those are roads, you're going to see an odd complex. It is one of the biggest nuclear bunkers in all of Cold War history. Wow. Yeah. I'm not saying something. This has been to house a lot of official-type folks, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, not the good members of Denton's population. The good people of Denton had to fend for themselves. The top brass had a spot in the executive bunker. Yeah. You're saying that the gymnastics academy isn't going to have at least a couple places there? Come on, man. That's a building that's just out. But if you look at this place from that satellite footage you're talking about there, Ben, the map, it doesn't look like it's much of anything amidst all those other huge buildings that are around it. Yeah, because this one, the main part of it is underground. That part is true. During the late 20th century, this was a nuclear civil defense headquarters, and it was one of the first in a proposed series of similar facilities. Not all of them got built. Nowadays, the thing we're talking about on the map here is a headquarters for FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And boy, their representatives have a lot to say about this because there are all kinds of conspiracies and all sorts of speculation about what's going on out there in Denton. Maybe we go to Earl Armstrong. He did a series of great interviews back in around like 2018. he is a or at the time he was a public information specialist for fema which means you know our guy yeah spin doctor talks to the media gives the company line the talking points all that good stuff and no shade to anybody that works in public relations it's definitely a meaningful gig but it can also be a bit of a propaganda machine yeah just just don't do that thing if you're you find yourself in that position don't do that thing where everybody knows what happened and then you say like the exact opposite of what everybody knows happened it's not a good look not gonna not gonna come down on the right side of history with that one most most out most of the time yeah the party required you not to believe the evidence of your eyes and so that was their most meaningful uh yeah command yeah so earl armstrong is confirming everything that we we just introduced earlier right this facility is built in denton because it's not too close it's not too far from the major metro area and it is also kind of close to a nike missile battery it was just like um at the time the nike missile site was just three or four miles away from the denton bunker yeah yeah and he told ksat uh news outlet this he said the facility came about because in the 1950s the The Eisenhower administration realized that we needed a place for federal employees to seek shelter from a nuclear attack. And this was one of five facilities outside of the Washington, D.C. area. It had to be a certain distance away, to your point, Ben, from a metro area. And it had to be close to a Nike missile battery. And at the time, there was one just about three or four miles from here. And if you look at that map, zoom out a little bit and just take a look at how far away it is from that Dallas-Fort Worth area. at the time Dallas I mean both these cities are huge you got that airport in the center of them if atomic bombs hit either one of those major metropolitan areas you may you know you of course have to look at the megatonnage or you know kilotonnage of those bombs sure but in all likelihood unless there was one of the big boys that hit people in Denton who are attempting to respond to attacks like that would probably be able to continue to function there may be some damage and all that kind of stuff but you're likely not going to have the type of all-out destruction that you'd find at the center of where a nuclear bomb is going to go off. Right, like the ground zero thing. Everybody check out our previous episode, by the way, on surviving a nuclear attack. God, that was a bracing one. The thing I learned from Fallout, the TV show, apparently if you see the mushroom cloud in the distance and it is larger than your thumb, then you are going to die. It is too late for you. Yeah, unless you're right outside the shelter. If you were, if you happen to have the good fortune after the site opened in 1964, if you happen to have the good fortune to be just close, just close enough to run to the fallout shelter, you probably would have been okay. This thing had state of the art air scrubbers and ventilation. The blast doors were 13 tons. yeah and when you get in uh there are two different underground stories for living space dormitories kitchens um you know comms coordination of cog stuff ping pong i hope so because what else are they gonna do yeah you need like a contained uh a contained indoor recreation a rumpus room yeah maybe a conversation pit uh maybe those are coming back by the way i love them yeah That's a feature. So fallout shelter, conversation pit, a tower and a pool would be nice. Dream house. So it had everything you could possibly need. One of the most interesting things to me is thinking about kitchens in places like this and like how you actually make food for, we said like 300 people, right? I always think about submarines and the extensive food production that you can have on a submarine, which always baffled me, right? How could you possibly have that much supplies or that enough supplies to feed all of the crew on that submarine for that long? And then just like cooking inside a submarine like that? Like how does that work Where do you vent stuff And you know just so many questions Yeah it fascinating It sounds like we gone down some similar rabbit holes just watching the documentaries about how food prep works on maybe a carrier, but especially a submarine. And this is very similar. That's a great comparison because if S hits the F, these folks are basically in an isolated environment. It's very similar to a submarine. And also, I got to wonder, this is for everybody who's ever served on a submarine in the past, but I've got to wonder if the fallout shelter had the same informal rules as the submarines. Like everybody on a sub knows that when you get really nice dinner or when you get, you know, the steak and the lobster or whatever, they're giving that to you because it means you're going to be redeployed or your, your bid is going to be unexpectedly longer. So you might, you might be eating sandwiches for a month or what it probably not, but you know, you might be eating something pretty basic for a while. And then all of a sudden it's steak night and you learn that you're sailing for the straight of Hormuz. Okay. Oh, geez. You're talking about hot racking. Oh, that's another thing. Oh, geez. Well, or in this case, you know, Hey, it's your turn to go outside of the bunker and see what's going on. do a little recon yeah yeah you drew the bad straw we hope the suit works don't stay out too long and they say what happens if i stay out too long and they say just don't man good luck this is yeah in the case of food if we can just talk about that just for a moment because i yeah it was fascinating to know that according to uh so we read about this this facility could cook three meals a day for 300 people like without a problem for 30 days it's crazy yeah 1500 meals a day yeah and just thinking about the actual storage space for those rations right and like the facilities that you need like i just i wish i could see the menu not a shelf stable stuff oh yeah freeze-dried stuff uh also the walk-in freezers double as a morgue in a pinch you know Hopefully not at the same time. Well, no, I guess it would have to be. Maybe there was a little divider, you know, or something. I don't know. Yeah, maybe you get the really awesome food one night, and you say, hey, why are we pulling out all the stops on the menu? What's with all this fancy stuff? And they say, we had to clear one of the freezers because Doug is dead. This tastes a little like Doug. This tastes so Douggy. A little Douggy. Well, see, Doug's gone because he kind of poisoned most of us. Accidentally. Accidentally. Classic Doug. everybody rolls their eyes and then we cue the sitcom for we cue the sitcom theme for Doug yeah in a shelter and I hope we don't die in a shelter and we're trying to survive wow that was great it feels like a missed opportunity there hasn't been a fallout shelter sitcom it's like a model show think of all the kooky hijinks that the residents of a good fallout shelter might. I think that's a great idea. It also gives us a chance to follow up with the obsession I have, and I think we all share, which is a sitcom theme that elaborately explains the weird premise of the show. It's just so much better than the actual show. We love that. We do love that. Well, just really quickly, Noel, it reminds you of that show Avenue 5. did did y'all ever see that it was a kind of it's like a it's like being in a bunker but they're in a spaceship it was a space show right uh but wasn't that the family guy guy right that was his deal oh that's the orville isn't it now you're right i'm thinking of the orville but avenue five i think was this hugh lorry yes dr house himself but it just reminded me of that again like we're talking about with submarines right a spaceship a submarine a fallout shelter it's that isolation and anything outside of your controlled area is either death or probably death. Yeah, and this thing in Denton, seriously, this is top-notch stuff for the time. This can survive a one megaton nuclear blast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it can also function for a bit without outside help. We're talking its own drinking well, sanitation procedures for water as best as they could at the time, laundry facilities, diesel generators, all of which are great, but all of which have a limited window of functionality, right? The generators are no good if you run out of diesel. And if the water gets screwed up, then you don't really have an alternative. They don't have freeze-dried water, which is a great idea. Oh, yeah. What do you add? Powder and water. Add water. Warm it up. Just add water. We'll get a can. You just add water. We've got you. Proliferates. I'm writing it down for the county. Top 10 useless inventions. It's right under velvet paintings. Oh, for sure. Dude, water compression? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Really? Yeah. We also know that there were duplicates of a lot of federal-level vital records, because this is all about COG, continuity of government, continuity of operations. So any of these facilities like Denton, in theory, they would be used by high ranking government and military leaders up to and including the president if they happen to be like the Dallas Fort Worth area when the bombs flew. And they also they did have they had a clever way of communicating with the outside world they could tap into the emergency broadcast system we all know that one it's only a test it's fine this has been a test yes yeah you guys i didn't know that you could do this and maybe that's just because we've talked we've talked about faraday cages before and technology like that skiffs things that are meant to keep communications out clean rooms even or like you know static free all that stuff yes exactly yeah i i didn't know that you could put copper the metal copper in walls floors ceilings and you could create your own form of faraday cage basically to to prevent stuff that is in that room from being attacked by electromagnetic pulses that you might associate with an atomic weapon right and other forms of it you could i just didn't Yeah. But I didn't know it was copper. I always thought, you know, lead-lined walls or, you know, some other specific type of metal that you would need. That one just escaped me, I guess. That's why everybody steals copper, man, to make their bunkers. That's why? That's it. That's why. It's not the meth. Okay, it's partially the meth, but it's also the bunker. So this is cool because, right, like you said, it's a hardened area. area, their comm station, and they've got this neat system of redundant antennas. So if their normal antennas get blown away in a one megaton nuclear blast, then they've got three telescoping backup antennas on the property. So in theory, right, your first wave of antennas gets blown out of the water. You let some time pass, and then you've got this other wave of neat antennas that launch up from the ground right and they're strong enough with their mechanism that they can move all the junk that's piled over them and that uh this is a note from armstrong he says once you got those up you can communicate with whoever might be left geez ouch yeah it's a dark dark turn there uh armstrong and they had they had a lot of redundancy like this they also had shock mounts on you know their basic utilities so that a nuclear blast just the vibration of it wouldn't break all the pipes so again assuming you made it to the site in time and convinced them to let you in to this suddenly very exclusive club you would survive a nuclear attack that's so nuts the thought of shock mounting your vital systems i i don't think i ever would have thought of that i guess I guess when you're trying to solve the problem of the, the math, any massive shock wave. Right. Yeah. And then they didn't have bunker busters back then. Cause I don't know how you would even prevent that unless you put it deep enough underground. Right. Right. But that is so cool to me. It is weird to imagine this is all created in, you know, the early 1960s, like 1961 technology. Right. Yeah. It's such a rush to there. Yeah. They did a great, given that they were hurried at such a frenetic pace, they did a great job thinking through contingencies, you know? Oh, yeah. But my mind is now already thinking about all these cool pieces of tech they've got, right, and integrations. I'm thinking about the tech that would even exist in the 90s or, you know, the mid-2000s. And now where we are, like the cool, crazy stuff you could create. When you hear about stuff like this too, it also makes you realize how much of this tech was sort of held back in a way or wasn't available to the public. But they had stuff that, in many cases, hasn't been super improved upon since those days in terms of missile technology and a lot of these Faraday Cage type situations. It's all alien technology. I'm just going to say it. Fair. Fair enough. Oh, I was going to ask, are we talking, would they have had things like mainframe computers? Was there any sort of digital components, early, early computational components to this type of comms? Maybe something light, something that we would consider sort of primitive today. But if so, they did not publicly disclose that. Got it. They just talked about telecoms and radio communication. Broadcast-y stuff, yeah. Yeah, just so. And look, going back to our earlier point, right? at some time after the honeymoon period of your fallout shelter wears off, you start thinking about the outside world. So how do you get there? Turns out they were very worried about those ginormous heavy doors not opening once they were closed. So they had a series of escape hatches and observation towers. This is where Doug draws the short straw. This is where you pick some unlucky jabroni who has to uh go through a whole process to open the escape hatch get to the observation tower hope they don't die from fallout they have to climb up a ladder get open a door got to climb in there got to close the door so it's kind of air gapped and then they have to reach up uh and then somebody else has to uh pull a chain it takes 15 minutes for the hatch to open and uh then you get to see what you can see hopefully i love a hatch i love a hatch too okay yeah i'm putting that on the dream house list too uh okay conversation pit escape hatch tower pool fallout can we also add a tunnel a secret escape tunnel just in case you know swoop in yes let's do several tunnels just to be safe i'm maybe getting this wrong my reading of this, it was an article from ksat.com. Yeah. My understanding is that you would, it was within the facility, but almost just like a teeny little extension of the facility with some of the observation places, but not the good ones. I think you're talking about, Ben, where you actually leave the facility, you know, take a little hike, then go up to a tower where you can really get a good look. But didn't they have ones that were more like peephole kind of things? Yeah. Yeah, they're also really complicated where you go in a thing, open a thing, close a thing, get up there, and then you look out, just a little peek, and then you get back in. Like a little stalkery periscope in the ground. Okay, so we've obviously fallen into a very weird version of Cribs right now, and we're talking about how awesome this stuff is and how badly we want to live in one, even without nuclear catastrophe. but maybe it's time to talk turkey. So let's see if we pause for a word from our sponsors and then play a little real estate and see how much this is actually going to cost us. Sounds good. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun. Tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. 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Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. we've returned okay bells whistles awesome the only thing they're missing of course is velvet paintings and ping pong tables well we they may have had those yeah you got to be the ping pong you wish to see in the world i'm sure someone would have improvised it i mean okay so how much did this all cost all in right if we're shopping if we're the boffins over in denton during the Cold War, how much are we going to pay to have this cool compound? It's not bad, you guys. Not bad at all. What? A little less than $3 million? In what? 1960 something money? 1961? 1964. So today, that'd be a little closer to about 28 mil. Yeah. Which still seems just extraordinarily inexpensive. So much so that I'd be a little worried if it was our bunker our our perception of value and like how much things cost are so skewed these days how much is that ballroom supposed to be again it's it's about 400 million more than are you serious 400 yeah 400 million and again i think i think it's more than a ballroom you think it might be a bunker as well yes it could be a lot of things i'm telling you they're they're doing they're mining crypto down there i swear i mean straight out the ground at this point yes fresh crypto straight out of the ground undiluted unfiltered non-pasteurized crypto take a bite of that bitcoin make sure it's real yeah so okay the threat of the cold war becomes less immediate to people right where now we're past things like the cuban missile crisis etc etc eventually fema takes over the whole thing, the whole kit and caboodle. That's in 1979, the same year of the Iranian Revolution. And then over time, a lot of the cool bells and whistles we talking about here Pure they fall into disuse partially because there a lack of funding because people aren so terrified of a nuclear disaster but then also because all this cool technology we talking about is dated at this point they literally can't find replacement parts yeah it makes sense oh and who's gonna you know drop in a brand new state-of-the-art kitchen with viking appliances actually well i can imagine one one president that might want viking stuff and gold materials oh jimmy carter yeah jimmy carter yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we had a president named jimmy oh that's weird that's cool man i think it's james r carter jr we're we're biased to his friends and we're his friends he's from our neck of the woods yeah the jimmy carter presidential library right here in atlanta Which is a sleeper hit, by the way, folks, not to derail us too much, but if you are ever in our fair metropolis and you want to surprise a romantic partner, if the weather's nice, get thee to the Carter Center because they have a cool kind of secret garden in the back. And it's got one of the best views of the city. I have never set foot in that place. I need to do that. It's one of those things that when you live in a place like if you're a New Yorker, you don't know the Statue of Liberty. But I got to check out the presidential library or the Carter Center over there. Pass by it all the time. But back to the bunker. What's going on inside of this bunker as it starts to kind of fall into disrepair? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, so this becomes a little bit gentrified, or it's reused the same way that another city might take over an old warehouse, right, and make it one of those live, laugh, love, mixed-use things. So the doors are welded open, the big 13-ton doors, just so that they never accidentally close, right? The kitchen, the dorm, the decontamination showers, they all get replaced with office space. And you got to you got to think about it, right? It'd be kind of cool if you're if you lived in Denton, you worked for FEMA and you went into the office that used to be a fallout shelter. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I'm into it. I'll go anytime. Yeah, let's go to work. important caveat it is no longer a fallout shelter you can't close the door it's fallout shelter ish it's still got some of the features surely it's still got those uh what is it 13 ton blast doors and the copper infused walls well but they're it's all welded open right i've heard things being welded shut by the way how does one weld something open i guess you just break the seal and then put it by the open yeah put it by the wall and say no one touch it yeah but you can pile up the furniture guys you can you can barricade the door sure you can maybe according to speculation run to some escape tunnels i don't we'll get into that right so okay armstrong says and he's probably one he's one of our best sources on this he says look it could have still functioned as a legit fallout shelter all the way up to the mid 1980s and he says the reason that it's no longer a fallout shelter is because after hurricane katrina congress said you gotta hire more staff at fema and so they had to find office space that's the official reason that they got rid of the all the bells and whistles yeah as much of a cubicle as much of a bummer as it is to work in an office or a cubicle in the best of situations with like a window can you imagine having to report to work in an underground like cubicle farm that just sounds like the most depressing thing yeah They'd probably give you a poster. A little cat. Okay, yeah, that too. Maybe one of those anti-depression lights. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't we just see that recently somewhere where there were pretty large displays that were meant to mimic the outside, but it looks like there's a city or something? That's some dystopian sounding stuff right there. It happens in a lot of fallout shelters, for sure. There's serious psychological research into how to minimize the chances of people going mad. Maybe a nice video wall, you know, with like a screensaver, with like a nice tree. Something that looks like a mild, relaxing ocean wave, you know, over by Waikiki or whatever. Yeah. And then it plays ads like every, I don't know, 20 minutes. It is ad supported. It is ad supported. you do have to pony up an additional subscriber fee if you want the wave without the ads. Our existence is ad supported at this point, y'all. I mean, we're the worst people to ask about it. That's true. Our existence in particular is ad supported. No, that's very true. Thank you all for tuning in. Cheers. Yeah, cheers, everybody. So now this site is home to FEMA's Region 6 headquarters. They do a lot of important work. They coordinate disaster response for everything from like the space shuttle explosion to the Oklahoma City bombing. And of course, floods, hurricanes, the darker acts of God. This is where people, everybody meets up to have stability during chaos. So something happens, something goes south, even like some ice storms in the area. It's where all the federal agencies get together. It's like a clubhouse. They figure out who needs what, when, where, how much they need, and how quickly it can get to those people who need help. Pretty good. Pretty noble. Oh, yeah. It has been utilized, right? Quite a few times. Well, is it Harvey? Not Hurricane Harvey. It was like, there was some storm called Harvey, I think, that this place in particular was given a lot of credit for the work that came out of it. Yeah, yeah. And we know some folks who have, at least on the military side, coordinated with FEMA. And these regional headquarters come up a lot. They play a pivotal role in disaster response. And so maybe with that, guys, it's more fair to say the compound has not so much been a secret as not super publicized after its construction. Locals know about it. A couple of people work there for FEMA. But given its strange history and the fact that it is a nuclear bunker, it's not surprising that so many people have speculated about this. And there's an interesting note. There's an interesting note here where you can tell Armstrong and other FEMA reps probably are a little bit frustrated by answering the same questions over and over and over again in press conferences and interviews. uh, Armstrong talks with case ad about how people would just rock up to the gates of this FEMA headquarters. And they would say, Hey, can we take a tour? We want to, or we're worried that bombs are going to drop. Can we stay here? Is the president here right now? And he has to say, an audience with the president. We should do that. Let's get, let's get up there and see. They can't refuse you. It's a, it's the law. It's in the constitution. It's a party foul to refuse you. I love it. So Armstrong is just saying that they've had all these people rock up and he has to continually tell them or other FEMA staff has to continually tell them, no, sorry, bro. We don't hold anybody here. People don't live here. There are two floors, just two. It's 50,000 square feet. It's 58 feet down. Also, no, just going to get in front of your next question. We don't have missiles here. Wouldn't some of these folks demanding answers have been on the conspiratorial side, like looking at it from the perspective of you're holding prisoners here? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but there's also that thing. We've seen the rumors. We've hinted at it a couple times in this episode already. the concept that if you take the time, the effort, the money to build something like this over this many years now, since 1964, when it was completed, don't you think maybe you build something else into it as a part of it or connect it up to another series of these things or other underground facilities you might have? You know what? Yeah, man, because that's, here's the thing, just thinking objectively, it seems dumb not to do that. Just objectively, it feels like something someone would have pitched and it feels like it would be a really great idea. It's a no brainer. I mean, that's why that's the other part, right? If we're being conspiratorial, as is our remit on this show, if there is some aspect of secret government or deep state or after the fall of civilization stuff going on, if that was the case, why would anyone confirm it? you're not going to tell people no the worst thing you would do just be like hey this is what we did check it out yay we're on instagram coming to you live from the secret tunnel what's up guys you know we got doug coming through all right i'm gonna give up on the doug jokes but he's a legend never forget doug he's with us in our hearts so what do you guys think about the tunnels though that's what i was gonna say we were promised tunnels ben yeah well that's tunnels that's the whole thing that's why pure pure's statement to us about quietly drilling underneath denton texas and nobody on the surface knew that they were drilling these huge like boring these huge holes underneath denton near the waterways and everything how could you do that how could you do that nobody knows pure assured us that it's possible is it don't we think that there are other large holes either for waterways or for some kind of transportation or as we're talking about here secure movement of equipment and people. Can we also just say that it's come up multiple times in recent discussions about phantom noises? I believe it was another listener that wrote in concerning a crazy sound that was happening. And I can't remember exactly where, maybe it was St. Louis, but how maybe that was the sound of these types of activities going on. And then it reminded me of the plot point in Better Call Saul, where they're building the crazy underground meth lab. And in order to blow up the tunnels or do the demolition they needed to do, they timed it. So it had, it coincided with like a train passing so that no one would like notice, uh, it does. My mind does immediately go there in terms of ways that they could mask this type of, uh, operation. Yeah. It's just, it's plausible again, and folks, apologies if we sound crazy, but just objectively, that would be a good idea. That would be such a good idea that it would be kind of weird not to do it, to have, uh, passageways for barracks and missile silos. There are, here's another thing, there are all these rumors amid the good people of Denton that you can see oddly placed manholes, right? You can see inexplicable doors or things that have been walled up. And there are proven underground structures in addition to the bunker. Texas Women's University has old underground tunnels and they're used for utility maintenance. Do check out our episode on fake buildings. This immediately makes me think of like a lot of these facades that are secret access points to subway, you know, tunnels or various things like that. Utilities. This is something that could certainly be deployed. Yeah. The very polite people at Con Ed in New York City. God bless them in their PR department. Who told us to get the hell out of Dodge. Pretty diplomatically, I would say. Very diplomatically. They did a good job. I want to say that. I probably shouldn't have been there, to be honest. I still remember, yeah, we probably shouldn't have, but I still remember my dumb response talking to those folks where I said something like, oh, we're just drinking coffee, which was true. Guys, it's making me think of that movie, Us. No, sorry. The movie Us. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that was a total underground tunnel situation. Yeah. Absolutely. Mild spoilers, I guess. I think it's established from the jump that there are these tunnels. It's a fever dream. I love dream logic. I just can't say enough about Jordan Peele, man. He is awesome, and I can't wait to see what else he does. Yeah, I actually rewatched Nope the other day. I think that's my favorite of his, that I think about it. I don't know. I'm still on Get Out. Get Out's phenomenal, for sure. Nope, something about it, though, just really does it for me and takes a lot of boxes for the type of thing that we talk about. Yeah, scratches behind the conspiratorial ears, for sure, man. It's all about the Tim Heidecker for me, guys. I don't know why. Oh, he's great. He does a mild spoiler. he does a real good death the man hey does a good on-screen death yeah the as his character the actual tim is fine as far as we know and he's got a podcast so check that out office hours he's also makes really really good records he's just like a genuinely talented folk song writer kind of like rock folk dude uh very very very talented and so we hear that there are tunnels everywhere in Denton from the old TI building to the courthouse, silos to barracks like we've talked about. And some of those stories may indeed have a kernel of truth. There are multiple local accounts of people encountering mysterious bricked up entries, right? Or doors that don't make sense and don't open. But again, at this point, as we're recording Friday, February 6, 2026, No government agency has confirmed the existence of any vast interconnected tunnel network. Those things don't exist, or at least no one has been confirmed to have access to them. That's our story for now. Thanks again to you, Pure, for the phenomenal suggestion. Noel, as you said in previous conversation, we've been astonished by how many people across the country and indeed the planet have written in with similar stories and allegations of conspiracies. conspiracies. Please stay tuned for our upcoming episode on more underground structures. And can we also say, too, I think we've all been really happy to hear from some new folks that are writing in after having discovered the show on Netflix, which is really awesome. So welcome to all of all of all of you new folks who are enjoying us here on Netflix. And just a reminder, there's other content on the podcast audio only feed. We do strange news and listener mail episodes every single week that don't make it here as video. So plenty of stuff to check out on the old podcast feed. And we'd also love to hear your take, folks. You're the best part of this show. Could the U.S. government really hide a massive underground tunnel network and avoid discovery for decades? I think we've talked ourselves into a soft yes on this one because stranger stuff has happened. The new album from Soft Yes. Oh, that's an old joke for our pal Paul Deckett. Oh, man. Shout out to you, Paul. Mission Control. Also, if this happened, fueled by the panic of the Cold War, if the feds really did build a network like this in Denton, it's almost certainly the stuff they don't want you to know. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. Find us online. Shoot us a telephone call or send us an email. Yeah, if you want to find us on social media platforms of note, you can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff show, depending. I think you can also give us a telephone call. Oh, yes. We have a phone number. It is 1-833-STD-WYTK. Turn those letters into numbers, pick up your phone, and then call us. It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes. Say whatever you'd like. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we can use your name and message on one of our listener mail episodes that you'll find in the audio versions of this show, wherever you get your favorite shows. If you'd like to send us an email, we are. The entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back. No editorial guidelines, no word limits. Send us the pictures. Send us the links. Ask us the questions. Get a random fact from us in return. take us to the edge of the rabbit hole and we'll do the rest. For now, we'll see you in the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio.com Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. 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